


Vapaus

by Halja



Category: Finnish Mythology, Kalevala - Elias Lönnrot
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Childhood Trauma, Coping, Feminist Themes, Freedom, Gen, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Incest, Implied/Referenced Pedophilia, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, Implied/Referenced Sibling Incest, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Misogyny, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slut Shaming, Suicide Attempt, Trauma, different ways of coping, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-06-01 21:01:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6536197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Halja/pseuds/Halja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three second chances, nothing more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vapaus

 

 

 

 

She still has memories of another body, buried deep down in the back of her mind. At night, safe and warm and dry in her bed, she dreams of water pouring in her mouth and scales growing from her back to cover all of her skin, of her fins cutting through the waves, swimming through sea and stream and river in the wrong direction to follow a new, ancient instinct that feels so right.

She looks just like she did once, though. Tall and fair, golden hair and blue eyes, heads turning when she walks down the street. She chooses not to pretend that she doesn’t notice the stray glances, the pointing and nudging, the whistling and the words they throw her way like stones. She keeps her head high and her shoulders and back rod-straight, she looks in the eye the men who stare at her breasts or her legs, she stops and turns and returns the _compliments_ at every chance she gets. She does it for all the girls walking with downcast eyes and red over their cheeks, too, all the ones who try to curl into themselves and hurry their pace yet still don’t dare to run because that’d be _overreacting_ and just being _silly_ , for the ones who won’t talk about it because they’ll just be told to smile, to _like it,_ and aren’t they happy they’re getting so much attention?

She pretends to be a long-awaited friend for the woman at the bar with _please just don’t talk to me_ written all over her pale face, and she stands close to the little girl clutching her books close to her chest at the bus stop, gets a chance to see her big dark eyes light up in her small dark face. She goes to the pool two days a week, three when she can, and she learns to swim. She swears to herself that no-one will force her to push her head under the icy water again, to give away her youth and her warm blood and accept surrender as her only way to keep fighting, defeat as if it was victory.

Freedom, she finds, is better when you can have it and keep it, fully and on your terms, when it’s not just a word on the cold grey stone of a grave.

Freedom, she finds, can even be joy, when it is shared.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

She doesn’t trust the men she meets on the dancefloor, of course. She watches her drink closely, shots dirty looks to the ones who bump into her when she’s just laughing and flailing around with her friends and then pretend it was an accident, raises her eyebrow at the strangers who offer to take her home with them.

The men off the dancefloor, the nice and respectable ones with confident smiles and concerned glances and an appropriate, wise word for every single occasion, those she trusts even less. They tell her to wear something that covers more of her skin, that it is really so childish and irresponsible to spend her nights dancing, that she’s young now but eventually she’ll want to settle down – and aren’t they _so nice,_ so respectable, so very caring and sweet even when she’s cold and flippant and won’t just _see reason?_ They don’t say that last bit out loud, of course, but it is there, hidden between their teeth, just waiting to roll off their tongues.

They say they don’t like the way she dresses, yet they’re always looking at her. They say she’ll settle down out of her own will, yet what they mean is that they’ll manage to tame her, one day, and then she’ll keep being beautiful and passionate but for their eyes only, and she’ll also learn how to be docile and sweet.

She’s tired of cages. Tired of men trying to lock her in, and tired of willingly locking herself in just for a pretty smile and a burning kiss, too. Tired of the ones who’ll do everything and say everything and promise everything to have her, and once they have her will soon want another, and use any available excuse to discard her, swap her for other cold wild women to tame.

So she goes out in the evening, and stays out all night, and dances until her feet hurt in her high-heeled shoes, the nice red ones that actually make her legs look longer beyond her tight short skirt. She laughs too loud, and sings too badly, and sometimes she may even drink too much.

She dyes bright red streaks into her hair, at some point – not as sign of love, not out of nostalgia, but as a memento for herself. And as a challenge to the world, perhaps.

 _See what has been done to me,_ she screams without even bothering with words, _see what I’ll never allow you to do again._

Some say she’s lost, some just think it. But she knows the truth – that she’s not lost, that she’s not abandoned, that this time she’s just free to go wherever she wants.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

A lot of his days are good, now.

Not perfect, of course – far from perfect, often. But they’re still good. He remembers a time when most days were bad and then worse than bad, though. So he contents himself with the good days, and the not-so-good days too, and even the days that are neither good nor bad nor _anything_ at all.

The bad days always come, though, sooner or later – a child crying in the park, scolded too harshly by his exasperated father for just a little tantrum. An old picture of a dead girl in a newspaper, a memory of a time when she put a fake smile on her pink lips and kept the scars on her arm hidden from view. A face that doesn’t look a familiar at all, except it somehow _does,_ or maybe a knife that he has no idea how he got his hands on, or how it found its way back inside his pocket when he _knows_ he put it back inside its drawer.

The bad days always come, but when they do he tells himself he’s ready to face them. He swallows the bile down, doesn’t care if it chokes him. He stops digging his nails into his palms, and tries to unclench his fists, tries to see the world – _this_ world, brand new and so different – again through the thick fog of hot rage and icy fear that clouds his eyes and his mind. He breaths, in and out and in and out again, and he doesn’t stop until he’s actually breathing normally again, until the hard weight inside his chest lifts and the coils of iron around his lungs melt.

It doesn’t always work. He chooses to focus on the times when it does. He’s seen what holding on to the bad stuff until it hurts can do to him. He has learned, or at least he wants to believe that.

It’s not easy, not as much as he’d like it. There are still days when he’s angry, and nights when he wants to hurt someone, anyone, himself. When his breathing is quick and ragged and won’t slow down, and he trembles and doesn’t know how to steady himself and go on as if nothing ever happened. When past and present collide and mix, to the point that he’s not even sure of which is which anymore. Times when he just wants to give up, one more time.

He has to tell himself to go on, and he doesn’t sound convincing to his own ears. He wonders why he still has to struggle and fight, why again in this life as well as the last one, and he has to think and come up with a new answer every single time, to the point where he thinks he’s just making it up as he goes, that none of the answers are true.

And yet some nights, when it’s too late to stay up and he’s sitting at the kitchen table in the dark without even wanting to turn the lights on, and he tries to talk to the knife but the knife does not talk back, not even once, he thinks that maybe it _is_ really worth it.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title should mean "freedom" in Finnish. Of course, online dictionaries may have screwed me over yet another time.


End file.
